Introducing the Travula

Since I began my Fulbright FLTA programme on 12th August, I've been keeping another blog at http://www.ktravula.com meant to detail my experiences on the American soil for the period of the programme.

If you are interested in the travel, travails and triumphs of this traveller, follow me on the ktravula blog, where truth is often stranger than fiction.

Looking Back

I just realized that this blog is over three years old now. Wow. If it were a baby, it would have long learnt to call me "daddy"!!!

While chatting online yesterday with a faithful blog reader/fan whom I've never even met, I realized that so many waters had passed under this iGwatala bridge. I remember a time when I took the whole site offline for a reason I no longer remember. Sometimes I felt that I was expecting too much from the portal. I overcame the phase, resolved myself to see it as what it is: just a blank slate to write on, and we've been fine ever since, during the ups and downs. Today, I want to re-visit a few of the most interesting posts in the history of my blog, and take my new readers back down memory lane. Enjoy.

My Books of 2006 (December, 2006)
On the Spell Checker (December, 2006)
How to Write a Poem (October, 2006)
Discovering Babel Poetry (February, 2007)
Discovering More Babel Poetry (February, 2007)
Two Poems from Lagos (January, 2007)
Rise of the Machines (October, 2008)
Grammatika (September, 2008)
Some Ramblings on Language (May, 2009)
Pidigin English and I (July, 2009)

You can find my (almost) sonnet, "Here, moving", that won the Sentinel Bar Challenge of October, 2006 online. My article "Speaking the Machine: a personal narrative of a translation experience" was also published in Farafina Issue #12 of December 2007, and it skipped my mind to blog about it. I love that article. My contribution to Books of 2008, as compiled by Molara Wood and published in the very first issue of Next Newspaper is also online. I look forward to contributing to the next issue. I came across some very interesting books this year. My short story, "Behind the Door" was published by StoryTime in May 2009, and it's here where you can read and leave comments. They are appreciated. I've also contributed to Nigerianstalk.org, Instablogs and Farafina Blog as a guest blogger. My poem, "I'd Rather Be A Man" - a cheeky gender satire was recently performed (thanks to Laolu Olajugbe) at a gathering of the Guild of Artist and Poets in Abuja to critical appraisal. The feedback to it has once again assured that I could keep its sacred texts to myself for a little while more ;) Sorry folks.

I've also managed to finally join the Twitter train, and so far, it's turning out to be a very good resource for the news I could use. If you ever find yourself on its "multiverse", come find me @ Baroka. Let me tell you what I know. Now, if you'd excuse me, it's time for me to get back to learning Yoruba in the depths. I will need all the advice/luck I can get to be a good foreign language teacher in a foreign university.


Update 03/10: Take a look also at my pre-latest post - this one, that made me so, so very mad.


Ps: The photo above is of "Sẹkẹrẹ", a traditional Yoruba musical instrument in the percussion category. The photo was stolen from Jumoke Verissimo's Facebook page. How do I know that she won't sue me?

It should have been funny!

A picture is supposed to say more than a thousand words, so no words need be said here, except that I didn't know that it has become this bad for us here.

See photograph. Click to see larger image.

We Had Him!

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing,
now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips
like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace.
Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon.
In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell time.
No oceans can rush our tides with the abrupt absence of our treasure.

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember
that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love,
and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style.
We had him whether we know who he was or did not know,
he was ours and we were his.
We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.
And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.
We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing.
He gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.
In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England

We are missing Michael.
But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

Maya Angelou

written for Michael Jackson Memorial and read by Queen Latifah

Pidgin English and I

I was not always a fan of pidgin (now written in Nigerian academic circles as Nigerian Pidgin or NP). Actually the first time the language was spoken to me by one of the "worldly" sophisticated senior boy in my primary school, I was confused because I wasn't sure whether he was mocking me or really asking a question. I told him I saw him playing football somewhere close to my house the evening before, and he responded with "Which kain football?" That was the end of the conversation.

That was the first I could remember, and I have gradually come into knowledge that it is a language to be reckoned with, and not just a slang used by touts and marijuana smokers, even though the most prominent icons of the language were mostly people of rebellious gait. That last part, as true as it might sound, have now also been discovered to be false. While in the university, I found that there actually exist a body of people whose first language (or L1 as we call it) is the Nigerian Pidgin. They do not speak English, and they barely speak their own local languages. To them, Pidgin is the mother tongue.

For years however, the only places where we heard Pidgin spoken was on television - by dubious elements, uneducated old men, gate men, prostitutes, pickpockets and, well, musicians. It relegated the status of the language to the pedestrian, and informal. But that was then. Today, the language is becoming mainstream although not yet elevated officially to the full status of a language. The official books must be the only places where the language is not yet so recognized. As far as the streets are concerned, it is a language on its own, as unique as Hausa or Yoruba, perhaps even with a larger number of speakers than the two combined.

Arguments in Nigerian fiction have asked whether any official orthography exists or could be made for the "language" if it must be so called. As at now, there is none. There is not even a dictionary yet even though I'm privy to information about one in the making. Just yesterday, I stumbled on PidginGuide, a sort of Wiki for Pidgin where the users determine the content and size. Along with being free and globally acceptable, the idea has brought into light more possibilities for the codification of Pidgin in the nearest future. One argument against its reliability says that the number of people contributing doesn't guarantee the quality of the work. This would have been true but the fact that the openness of this project everyone makes it less likely to be unreliable as a means of keeping up with the language's growth and evolution within the urban population. Where it *might* lack is in keeping up with the rural, uneducated population. For that, we may still have to depend on the bits we get from Naija hip-hop stars

Check related articles at Wikipedia, and here and here for a conference announcement for a Nigerian Pidgin English conference in Ibadan next week.